


Tales of Summons

by Kasan_Soulblade



Series: Of Shattered Glass/These Warped Perspectives [19]
Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Gen, Ranges from Kharlan war to present regeneration journey, possibly to go past the game, summon spirit lore centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 14:03:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1307485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasan_Soulblade/pseuds/Kasan_Soulblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some light, some dark, this is a coagulation of short stories centered about one canon character and a summon spirit.  Each chapter will have notes if they are needed to elaborate, all stories are either comparable with Shards or it's related works/arches.  And all will have end game spoilers.</p><p>Tentatively part of the "Foundation" arch... but only if you stretch it... honestly I've ficlets from Kharlan up to "modern day" with this arch... so it's very hard to place.</p><p>Spirit list/ story progress</p><p>Efreet/ done (Mithos)<br/>Luna/ done (Yuan)<br/>Undine/ done (Kratos)<br/>Sylph/ pending (Lloyd?)<br/>Volt/ pending (Sheena?)<br/>Origin/ pending (Zelos?)<br/>Shadow/ pending (Regal?)<br/>Celes/ pending (Colette?)<br/>Gnome/ pending (Raine?)<br/>Maxwell/pending  (??)</p><p>potential add ons...<br/>The Mana Tree's spirit<br/>The summon spirit of heart</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cooking Efreet/Mithos

**Author's Note:**

> Efreet/Mithos, set during the Kharlan war before things went bad.

_Cooking_

_Efreet/Mithos_

Mithos glared at the ex-brigand, Kratos returned the glare. The remains of the human's stew were slowly dribbling along the sands making a dull brown stream at the red clad man's feet. Kratos' eye twitched a bad sign. Seeing the Protozoan, Mithos lifted a hand and pointed to the avian shaped being.

"Noishe started it!"

"Noishe did not start it. And it matters not who started it but who finished it. Which was you. You just wasted more food than I care to think about-"

And Kratos went on… and on about the dumb food. He didn't even listen to Mithos when the half elf tried to explain. So the brave hero of Sylune, savior of the Duke of Klavir, and hopeful regenerator of the great Kharlan Tree was now stuck making dinner.

He had sulked and whined, but at last he'd gotten to it. Cutting the vegetables wasn't that bad, fetching the water was tiring after a days walking but not really a big chore. It was the waiting that got to him. The long, boring span of waiting that drove him absolutely crazy!

"Boil, curse you!" Mithos growled at the water.

"No using your mana!" Yuan barked.

What made it twice as unfair was that Kratos had gotten Yuan to go along with this. Mithos could have cheated, just a tiny bit, but with those alien sapphire eyes boring into him he hadn't quite dared. Because Mithos knew Yuan, Yuan wouldn't yell at him or anything, he'd just tell Martel then he'd really be in it then.

It just wasn't fair! Heros shouldn't have to make dinner!

Then suddenly an idea came to him, he smiled and raised a hand. With a quick chant the small fire flickered, then shot up, expanded a hundred times and the heat became so intense that the nearest trees withered and shed their branches. The grass around the once small cook fire ignited, and from the towering blaze came a creature.

Red, it towered over the nearest trees and was wreathed in flames from the deepest hells, it's hide had been forged from the hottest pyres of the sun, and it's twin horns were made from the ashes of the burned bones of the world.

And even those smoldered.

Little wonder they called him "the red giant".

The creature bowed to his Summoner, then, hearing no commands set Efreet set his ember eyes to scanning the clearing. The shocked occupants weren’t hostile, some nearly familiar, thus indifference was the flavor of his regard.

"I see no enemies."

Its voice was the crackling of a forest fire, the snap of trees shattering in the face of the hottest conflagration.

Smiling Mithos spied the pot perched between those horns, he pointed and Efreet reached up with a clawed hand to take off the makeshift "helmet".

"Thank you." Mithos took the steaming pot and its scalding hot water from the spirit. The over sized mitts he was wearing protected his hands from the scalding heat. "I just needed the water to boil, and it's really hot now."

Had Efreet any eyebrows to raise both would have shot up, as it was he was bound by the pact and now that his duty was done he must leave the world that could only barely tolerate his presence. Confused, he looked around to see if that's all his Summoner had truly needed. No fell armies materialized and the golden haired child seemed content to fuss over the charred pot.

With a shrug the beast turned from mortals, setting mind than body to the inferno that was its home. The last words he heard from the world of mortals came from the spring haired girl.

"You summoned Efreet _to cook dinne_ r!"

"The fire was too slow Mar-"

"You are in _serious_ trouble mister."

 


	2. This Birth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is right on the tip of a Mature ranking. Considering the gore, body horor, and forced transformation I figure a warning is justified.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A rather gory detailing of the angelic transformation... or rather the Shards version of it. 
> 
> And if anyone missed the summery note this is a borderline mature chapter. All those gore/violence warnings apply here. 
> 
> I've a very different view upon the Seraph and how things work with them, as well as Symphonia's mana system and this is in part to show a little of it. Longer pieces touch up on it (Defiance and Shards actually go into great depth explaining/introducing those changes) but this I wanted to show from how it would look from someone with no idea what was going on.
> 
> Yuan/Luna peice

Writhing, screaming, Kratos lay at the feet of a Goddess. Both were as pale as the Goddess' namesake luminescence, only one of them cried… Or rather only one of them could. Slender fingers twined auburn locks, even as ghostly hands wound around the whimpering human's frame to support him. She supported, and looked on, without horror, without fear, as the crimson lines along the man's back spread. They had started as nicks, and as time wore on they grew to terrifying proportion. Every few second they seemed to be gaining yet another inch in length and width, the once dribble of crimson was now a torrent.

"Mithos, you swore this would be painless, that there would be no cost!"

Ice eyes, dead, they focused on him and he shivered.

"Everything has a cost, why should immortality be any different?"

Yuan no longer recognized the cold dead child before him, he moved to go to Kratos' side, perhaps his meager healing mana might be able to reverse… but a familiar power held him back. Origins' power…

Ripping, the sound of skin ripping, the sight of flesh parting, he'd never forget both. Had nightmares been allowed to him after he would have forever dreamed of both that sight and sound, but dreams were no longer his to cherish… or dread. Not after that day.

Kratos' skin writhed, tensed, and coiled; all in patterns so unnatural that there could be no doubt that the creature being wracked by such spasms was no longer human.

Or sane.

Gasping, no longer able to scream, the mercenary lifted his head. Red dribbled past his lips, a shocking crimson that ran down pallid lips. Hands clenched, turning the dun hued paving stone that adorned the most holy sight of Sylvarant into little more than sand. Kratos arched with a soundless scream, his face contorted in agony, his hands spasming sending the newly made dust to the winds.

Glazed but haunted, those brown eyes turned to them… seeking what, reassurance? Yuan could offer nothing, frozen by place in horror, and the reflected fear in Kratos' eyes made Yuan feel as if he had been part of a betrayal.

Kratos turned away from them both, and the Goddess held him as he mutely cried out and sobbed silently. The man sobbed without tears, his pain echoing in the silences of his altered mind.

"Mithos, you're killing him! Stop this!"

Futilely he reached for the Eternal Sword, meant to wrench it from the once noble half elf's hands… and he was rebuffed, again, by Origin.

He collapsed from the unseen reprimand; fell upon his knees gasping in pain. Unable to do anything else he watched. He couldn't save Kratos but he would not abandon his sole human friend.

Something wet, as long as a man was tall surged form the prone man's back. Kratos twisted and the Goddess held him steady, ignorant it seemed of liquid rubies that now dotted her white gown. She looked upon them, upon the once-man in her arms. Tears, colorless, ringed her eyes like light would ghost about the moon.

Save unlike light, it fell, one second brilliant, catching the hues of her rainbow hair, before falling to earth to be the same as any other type of tear.

 _What can I do?_ Her eyes asked, serenity broken by the tragedy she's wrought.

"Stop this!" Yuan howled. "I beg you, please, stop this. Kill him if you must, just make it stop!"

And when she looked upon him, the grief said what words could not.

She could not stop it, because it was already completed.

Red dripped from the rock still things that jutted out of Kratos' back, then slowly, oh so slowly the crimson rain fell away. Shivering, coated in slimy black the things twitched, and then fanned out. Feathers, shedding the mess of dead diseased muscle that had sheathed and nurtured them during their birth… They slowly fanned out. Two became four, then eight, wings of impossible length… Yuan shuddered to think of the pain of their birth. Of the impossible being nursed within a mortal's flesh and blood only to be ejected in such a horrible rending.

Such a horrible birth…

Luna looked upon the shivering creature in her hands, the creature her benediction and Mithos' vision had made, she held him close and cried the tears he could not.

 


	3. Lullaby

Lullaby

A Kratos Undine piece

 

When it rains, he remembers…

" _Look, there see? When it pours like this, do you see?"_

A warm arm encircled his waist. Holding him back so that he wouldn't wander beyond the edge of the light and get lost in the dark. He leaned back, breathing in the scent of her warmth and the wet earth. For him, they were inseparable. She always smelled of the rain, and now knowing what it was, he smiled. For him, she and the rain were one.

" _Look over there."_

_She had pointed, and obedient, he had looked. Shapeless shadows were ringed in flickering, falling, aqua, auras. They seemed different, alive, despite the fact that he knew he was really looking at a dead old stump. The dark shivered, peeled away, even as the sky roared, and he cringed back against the warmth. Another arm joined the first, her long auburn hair fell across his face, even as Volt roared and Sylph howled in response._

" _Shh, it's alright my little Kra-sean. Just Volt and Sylph being loud. They're old friends you know, they just won't admit it."_

" _Re… really…" He whimpered his black eyes wide._

" _That's why Volt roars, and Sylph howls. It's a contest of sorts. They make noise an whoever scares the most little children wins." He felt her chuckle more than heard it, it was a soft warm tickle against the top of his head. A loving caress accompanied by a loving tease._

" _You aren't scared, are you?"_

" _N… no..." Blinking the tears out of his eyes, tears born of a child's fears. "I... I'm not scared of anything." He assured, with a thin watery smile._

_She laughed at that, and held him close._

" _You don't need to protect me, Kra'sean, by not being afraid. Undine will protect us both just fine."_

_He nestled against her, drawing strength from her warmth. She held him, humming a lullaby older than centuries._

Her song, her voice… They would endure. In the centuries, in the darkest corners of his mind, to a time when sleep was little more than a fond memory, she would endure, in the edges of his recollection he would remember.

And when his child came to be, instinct would guild him. And when it stormed Kratos Aurion would gather his son up in his arms and hum while Undine's lullaby fell around them.


End file.
